When I wake up with an empty tummy, I just know the rest of the day will not go well. All I think about is food. Looking in the mirror, I think about food. I put on my hat, thinking about food. Cleaning my tongue with sandpaper, I think about food.

When I came across the old black and white photo of five solemn-looking children, I couldn’t look away. No matter how many hours I might spend studying that picture, I would never know the truth about their lives. Four boys and a girl. The resemblance between them was unmistakable. Their noses, eyes, ears and mouths were formed as if by the same sculptor, which made sense from the standpoint of shared genetics. The boys’ haircuts were all the same—short with blunt horizontal bangs. The girl, who appeared to be the youngest, wore her hair at chin-length and tied back, exposing her forehead.

If fear had a smell, you’d expect it to be sour, with an undertone of distinct dread. If fear embodied an aroma, it shouldn’t be vanilla—and yet that is what the breeze brought to me when I stopped running. My inaction was not by choice. My quarry had changed direction, no doubt trying to evade the inevitable and irreversible, true ending.

The toys covered the floor. So many toys, one child couldn’t possibly play with all of them in a span of six months. Plush toys. Wooden toys. Toy dolls. Costumes. Beach balls. A compact kitchen, which included a wall oven and a countertop microwave.

Appetite and desire. Mix in a bit of madness. Perhaps a large helping of greed. An itch. An ache. Keen to create. Addicted to the false adoration of an audience. Some appetites are insatiable.

Before the time of their mutual destruction, two clans shared the same remote valley, living on opposite sides of its wide and fast-flowing river. One group followed the banner of the red lion. Their sworn enemies hoisted the flag of the white wolf. It was understood that no one was to cross the river to the other side.

The soft, spongy black soil cushioned my feet. The translucent green canopy above blocked out most of the sunlight. Critters scuttled beneath the leaves of the past autumn. The aroma of damp vegetation and dirt was like a perfume to me. Inhaling deeply, I outstretched my arms, willing nature to nurture my body.

Separated by a small table in a crowded café, a man and a woman sat across from each other.

“How are you?” the man asked. He sat with his back straight, hands on the table.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” the woman answered. She still wore her coat, even though the café felt quite warm. Condensation covered the large window looking out onto the busy street.

Dragon

Standing outside the cave, I heard the constant dripping of water falling from the slate ceiling into the small reflecting pool. I smelled sulphur and woodsmoke. My boots flattened the various pieces of fragile bone along the pathway I had no choice, but to follow. As I walked further inward, the sets of bones became bigger and more plentiful. The stench of sulphur was everywhere. The scent of woodsmoke, almost non-existent.

Up until this point, I’d never been allowed to enter my grandfather’s bedroom. As kids, we somehow knew not to question why the door was always closed when we visited.

Now, a month after his passing, I hesitated to move forward. It’s difficult to break a life-long habit without it feeling like an intrusion. I slowly counted to three, pushed the door open and flicked the light on. The large room contained a bed, one dresser, a chair and something I didn’t expect to see.

After writing the first version of spicy, I was re-inspired after listening to music. A specific piece of music called The Last Vampire Waltz, posted on YouTube by an account called Mortis Academia.

When I write, I like listening to classical music in the background. This particular video popped up a couple of days ago. Since I''m a curious person, I played the video. I've played it so many times, an image kept showing up in my mind. Hence, this second version of spicy.

My fingers played with the keyboard, but refused to strike the letters. “What’s another definition for spicy?” I asked, talking to my cat. “I have to finish my writing exercise homework in an hour, but I don’t know what to write about. Definitely not spicy food. That’s too obvious.”

Clean-shaven and neatly attired, Captain Bartholomew Tobias Huxley stood taller than all of the men surrounding him. His long blonde hair had been tightly braided and tied with a length of narrow velvet ribbon. The brocade jacket he wore could have been plucked from a king’s wardrobe. His coal-black boots appeared new, but the suppleness of the leather revealed their true age.

When the phone rings at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, it’s either bad news or a clueless telemarketer calling from another hemisphere. I’d already had a rough night, so to say I wasn’t in the mood for an early-bird sales pitch doesn’t fully describe my demeanour when I jumped out of bed.

So many boxes, racking and shelving had been placed between the attic’s open doorway and that trunk, anyone would think it had been situated in such a manner on purpose. Hide it. Bury it. Keep the secrets from getting out.

Repulsive. The word sounds just like what it represents, especially when the syllables are drawn out and spoken in a low, menacing whisper.

Before I am able to deflect it, the memory of that old man in a green car takes hold over my consciousness.

Damn. I’d really thought that if I put my sunglasses on, I wouldn’t notice it as much. I’d always thought the colour of blood was more or less a shade of crimson. Darkened and sort of dull. I wasn’t prepared for the in-your-face bright red of spurting blood. Not that I’d ever actually seen blood spurting, until now.

“Is life worth living?” questioned a masculine voice.

The dimmer switch connection of my brain was turned down way low. I couldn’t answer him right away.

“Eden? Did you hear me?”

The man was persistent. I touched my cheekbone with my fingers as that side of my face stung and throbbed at the same time. “What just happened?” I asked.

A graceful hand turns
the body of a fist-sized fruit,
sensing the ripeness.

Each time I had embarked on this hike, I always chose the month of May, right in the middle of blackfly season. The cool air carried the scent of newly-formed moss, decaying leaves and the rich aroma of ancient black dirt. My ears always located the gurgling of the small stream before I found it with my eyes.

“You’d better find that bloody cricket,” Griff said. “I can’t concentrate.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Elmer responded. “It could be hiding anywhere.”

Griff turned around, his face reddened from frustration. He took off his thick glasses. “Don’t you realize how hard it is for me to do my job? That stupid noise is getting on my nerves. You don’t want that happening when I am working on this, get it?” He pointed to a small metal box sitting on the workbench in front of him before rotating back to his starting position.

“Okay,” Elmer said. “I get it—we can’t botch this job.”

Garbage in, garbage out.
Whatever in the world is that all about?
You throw away a perfectly fine red hat,
when it could be worn by a handsome black cat.
Don’t get me started on those overcooked noodles.
It’s a favourite delicacy of the ultra-posh poodles.
The well-soaked and warmed-over coffee grind scraps
are what flavour-seeking worms dream of during their naps.
So what if the flowers are a little bit wilted?
If they are tossed-out too early, they feel utterly jilted.

Without much difficulty, I found the large grouping of thistles I’d seen on a previous walk—their dark brown stalks standing out against the white birch trees bordering the forest beyond. The air around me held that lingering scent of dried-flower-sweetness mixed with damp-leaf-mustiness. I inhaled a few deep breaths of it as I closed my eyes and placed my hand in my jacket pocket to retrieve my jackknife.

All I found were my keys. Damn. This was not going to end well.

I didn’t want to go upstairs. My curiosity forced me to. It’s dirty, rough and gargantuan fist pushed me upwards as each step groaned and creaked as my bare feet landed. I couldn’t look up. I knew what would be on the window sill at the top of the stairs.

I spotted the gilt frame from a distance. I didn’t bother stopping to look at all the other shelves between where I stood and my new-found target. It’s like the thing emanated a magnetic field that pulled me in. Everything else fell to the margins. If I had passed a bar of gold, I wouldn’t have noticed it. If William Shakespeare sat in one of the old chairs they placed at the front of the store, I wouldn’t have cared. I had never felt such a feeling of tunnel vision. In my single-mindedness, I bumped into someone without saying, excuse me. That should tell you how obsessed I’d become in a matter of seconds.

This week's writing prompt ended up somewhere I did not expect. Without being aware of it, my writer's mind played its own word association trick on me.

Based on some of my childhood memories while living in a village bisected by a river, can you guess which parts are fiction and which ones are not?

Well, I am finally back to meeting up with other local writers and it's been awesome so far! Quite a few years ago, I used to be in a small group while taking a night-school writing course. We are getting in the habit of doing weekly writing exercises.

Here is the result of my first go around. The subject was truth or dare. I immediately thought of a group of teenagers gathered around a campfire near a river. Let's just say, my focus wandered as the story was told to me by my imagination.